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Flower Labs, a Cambridge University spinout, has launched a British frontier AI model that it says can match the performance of rivals from OpenAI and Anthropic.

The London and Hamburg-based start-up said its Endeavor general-purpose model, which draws on open-source software as well as its own proprietary intellectual property, completed tasks at similar levels to OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5, two of the US companies’ main models.

Users of Endeavor can also deploy it on their local IT systems, which the company says gives them reliable access, control and improved security. The leading US providers with “closed-source” models require users to access them via software interfaces, access to which can be withdrawn.

“Europe should not have to rent its intelligence indefinitely from a handful of US companies,” said Professor Nicholas Lane, co-founder and chief scientist of Flower Labs and professor of machine-learning systems at the University of Cambridge.

“If AI is going to become fundamental infrastructure for companies and governments, then those organisations need a credible way to control the intelligence their systems depend on. Endeavor gives them that option without asking them to step back from the frontier.”

The launch comes as the government seeks to support UK-based alternatives to the big US AI companies in order to reduce the country’s dependence on overseas suppliers. On Monday it opened the first competitions under a £100 million sovereign AI research and development procurement scheme, which will run as a series of contests for AI start-ups. One goal, the government said, was to “significantly expand the UK’s public AI compute capacity while reducing costs” for researchers and businesses.

The UK’s reliance on leading US AI models was highlighted in June when the US government and Anthropic temporarily restricted access to the latter’s Fable 5 model over US national security concerns, prompting Downing Street to seek an exemption from the ban.

Lane, 47, and his co-founders Daniel Beutel and Taner Topal set up Flower Labs in 2023 as a spinout from Cambridge University. The same year they attended Y Combinator, the US start-up accelerator. They have since raised $23.6 million, and their models, AI agents and infrastructure have been used in more than 2,500 organisations, including the US bank JP Morgan, the IBM-owned software company Red Hat and the US Department of Energy.

Flower Labs’ technology draws on the capabilities of freely available AI models developed by companies including Meta and Mistral, the French artificial intelligence company, many of which perform well for specific tasks. It knits them together, adding the reasoning of its own model, called Lizzy, as well as proprietary harnesses, the software infrastructure that wraps around AI models to turn them into functional AI agents.

Lane, who teaches machine learning at St John’s College, Cambridge, said the difference in performance between closed-source models such as Anthropic’s Claude and open-weight models, systems where the final trained numerical parameters are placed in the public domain, had become “vanishingly narrow”.

“Open-weights are catching up to closed-source and if you are a strong, technical company you can look at ways of using the best of open-source to stand up these frontier models that we say are as good as the closed-sourced models,” Lane said.

He said Flower Labs’ long-term strategy was to develop more of its own proprietary models itself, and the company expects to raise additional capital in 12 months’ time.

Endeavor itself is a closed-source model, sold under licence. It enables organisations to use an AI training method called federated learning, which allows the model to be trained on sensitive data without that data being transferred to a central server. The company said this can help preserve privacy and security and is of interest to healthcare, financial services and defence companies as well as governments. Flower Labs has also developed its own AI deployment tools and services, for which it charges a fee.

The launch adds a British name to a field in which overseas challengers have already been positioning themselves as the alternative to Silicon Valley for organisations wary of handing over their data, with Canada’s Cohere tripling its London footprint to chase the same demand for so-called sovereign AI.

Paul Jones

Harvard alumni and former New York Times journalist. Editor of Business Matters for over 15 years, the UKs largest business magazine. I am also head of Capital Business Media’s automotive division working for clients such as Red Bull Racing, Honda, Aston Martin and Infiniti.

SYDNEY — Shares in EQ Resources Ltd tumbled sharply on Wednesday, falling 9.41% to $0.385, as the small-cap tungsten producer got caught up in a broad selloff across the Australian resources sector amid a punishing session for the wider share market.

The decline wiped out a chunk of the stock’s recent gains, though EQ Resources remains one of the standout performers on the ASX this year, having ridden a historic run-up in global tungsten prices that has transformed the once-obscure miner into one of the market’s most closely watched resource stocks.

Wednesday’s fall came as the broader S&P/ASX 200 index sank nearly 1%, with materials stocks among the hardest hit sectors after fresh U.S. military strikes on Iran sent oil prices surging and triggered a deepening selloff in global bond markets. The turmoil rattled mining and resource names across the board, with major iron ore, gold and copper producers all posting steep losses in the same session, as investors reassessed risk appetite amid rising bond yields and inflation fears.

No company-specific announcement had emerged from EQ Resources by the time of the decline, suggesting Wednesday’s drop was driven largely by the same market-wide pressures weighing on resource stocks generally, rather than any change to the company’s underlying operations or outlook.

EQ Resources, which trades under the ticker EQR, is a Queensland-based miner that has positioned itself as one of the few significant Western producers of tungsten outside China, which controls the vast majority of global supply. The company’s flagship operation is the Mt Carbine tungsten mine in Far North Queensland, roughly two hours from Cairns, alongside its Barruecopardo mine in Spain’s Salamanca province. The company describes itself as pursuing the goal of building “a secure, reliable and traceable non-country-of-concern tungsten supply platform,” reflecting the broader push by Western governments and manufacturers to diversify tungsten supply chains away from Chinese dominance.

That positioning has proven lucrative for shareholders over the past year. Tungsten, a critical industrial metal used in everything from cutting tools and drilling equipment to aerospace components, munitions and electronics, has been in the grip of what analysts have described as a supercycle in 2026. Prices for ammonium paratungstate, a key intermediate product used to produce tungsten metal, have surged well over 200% since the start of the year, driven by a combination of tightening Chinese export quotas, falling ore grades at aging mines, and surging demand from defense and technology sectors. Beijing has restricted the number of companies permitted to export tungsten internationally through 2027, creating what traders have described as a structural supply squeeze that shows little sign of easing.

The rally in tungsten prices has directly benefited EQ Resources’ bottom line. The company posted record monthly revenue of roughly A$51 million in July, driven by its highest monthly production levels since late 2024 and strong sales volumes across both its Australian and Spanish operations. A subsequent quarterly update showed production climbing sharply, helping push the stock to its highest levels in a decade earlier this year. The company’s shares have also drawn attention after iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest disclosed a significant stake in the business, a move that triggered a sharp rally in the stock at the time.

Despite Wednesday’s decline, EQ Resources remains up substantially for the year, having delivered gains in the hundreds of percent over the past twelve months as investors piled into companies seen as beneficiaries of the tungsten supply crunch. The stock’s 52-week range stretches from around 3 cents to a high near 39 cents, illustrating the scale of its rise before Wednesday’s pullback.

Market analysts who have covered the stock have repeatedly flagged its volatility as a defining feature of the trade. The company was hit by a similarly sharp single-day decline of around 9% in July, a drop that came without any specific corporate announcement and was attributed at the time to profit-taking after the stock’s dramatic run-up. Wednesday’s decline appeared to follow a similar pattern, occurring alongside a broader risk-off shift across the ASX rather than any deterioration in the company’s own operational performance.

The stock’s underlying financial profile remains a point of scrutiny for some market watchers. Third-party data compiled from the company’s filings shows EQ Resources generated trailing twelve-month revenue of roughly A$75 million, but posted a net loss of approximately A$23 million alongside negative free cash flow, a combination that has fueled debate among analysts over how much of the company’s soaring share price reflects genuine earnings momentum versus speculative enthusiasm for the broader tungsten story. The company has also carried out a series of capital raisings over the past year, including a follow-on equity raising of roughly A$34 million, to help fund its production ramp-up.

Even so, the structural case for tungsten scarcity remains intact heading into the final months of 2026. China’s tightening grip on exports, combined with a lack of near-term alternative supply, has led some industry observers to warn that new mine supply from outside China is unlikely to meaningfully ease the market before the end of the decade. That dynamic has kept investor interest in companies like EQ Resources elevated even through periods of sharp share price volatility.

For now, Wednesday’s drop leaves EQ Resources shares trading well below their 52-week high, though still reflecting one of the more remarkable turnarounds among ASX-listed resource stocks this year. Investors will likely be watching closely for the company’s next quarterly production update, along with any further movement in benchmark tungsten prices, for signs of whether the stock’s underlying rally has further room to run or is entering a more prolonged period of consolidation after months of outsized gains.

Wordle players logging on Wednesday were greeted with puzzle number 1,901, a word that sent many solvers down two very different paths of thinking before the correct answer became clear.

The answer to Wednesday’s Wordle, September 2, 2026, is RULER.

The five-letter word carries two distinct meanings that tripped up plenty of players throughout the day, according to puzzle trackers who monitor daily solving trends. It can refer to a straight measuring tool typically marked with units of length, commonly used in classrooms, workshops and design studios, or it can describe a person who exercises supreme authority over a country, kingdom or realm. That dual meaning became a talking point among solvers on social media, with some guessing based on tools and measurement while others leaned toward monarchy and governance themes.

According to the New York Times’ WordleBot, the automated tool that tracks how efficiently players solve each day’s puzzle, the average Wordle player completed Wednesday’s puzzle in four moves on easy mode, or 3.9 moves under hard-mode rules, which require players to reuse any correctly placed letters in subsequent guesses.

Wordle, the daily word-guessing game acquired by The New York Times in early 2022, gives players six attempts to identify a hidden five-letter word. After each guess, tiles change color to indicate whether a letter is correct and properly placed, correct but misplaced, or absent from the word entirely. The game has retained a devoted global following since it first went viral, with millions of players logging on each day to maintain personal winning streaks and compare results with friends.

For Wednesday’s puzzle, RULER contained one repeated letter, the letter R, which appeared as both the first and final letter of the word. It also included two of the five vowels and featured two of the game’s most commonly occurring letters, according to puzzle-hint outlets that publish daily breakdowns without immediately revealing the solution.

Puzzle guides noted that strong opening guesses for Wednesday’s word would have included common Wordle starting words that quickly narrow the field of possibilities. Players who opened with words like STRIP were left with 27 possible remaining answers, according to WordleBot’s analysis, while those who used TRAIL were left with just 18 options, illustrating how starting-word choice can dramatically shape the difficulty of a given day’s puzzle.

One puzzle columnist who documented their own solving process on Wednesday described using an opening guess that turned three letters green immediately, narrowing the field to just four remaining candidates. That columnist said they briefly attempted RELIC as a follow-up guess, which proved incorrect, before ultimately solving the puzzle on their fourth attempt using REMIX as a testing word to eliminate remaining possibilities.

Puzzle-hint sites are generally careful to sequence their clues from vague to specific, allowing players to seek only as much help as they want without immediately spoiling the answer. Wednesday’s hint sequence typically began with a note on the word’s dual meaning, followed by details on letter repetition, vowel count, and finally the word’s starting letter, before revealing the full solution for players who remained stuck after exhausting the softer hints.

Wordle’s format has remained essentially unchanged since its rise to prominence, with a single new puzzle released each day at midnight local time and shared globally as players move through different time zones. The simplicity of the format, combined with its shareable emoji-based results grid, has been widely credited with helping fuel the game’s sustained popularity, even as numerous imitators and spinoff word games have emerged in the years since its debut.

The New York Times has continued to expand its portfolio of daily puzzle offerings alongside Wordle, including Connections, a word-grouping game; Strands, a word-search style puzzle with a hidden theme; and Pips, a newer addition that challenges players to arrange dominoes according to specific rules. Each game maintains its own daily archive, allowing players to revisit previous puzzles they may have missed.

For Wordle specifically, the Times has resisted making significant changes to the core mechanics of the game since acquiring it, a decision widely seen as key to preserving the format that made it a viral sensation in the first place. The company has, however, occasionally adjusted its word list to remove or swap out certain answers deemed too obscure, offensive, or repetitive for a mainstream daily audience.

Wednesday’s puzzle number, 1,901, reflects the running count of daily puzzles since Wordle’s original launch, a figure that continues to climb by one with each passing day regardless of time zone or regional release schedule. Longtime players often track this number closely, both as a point of pride for maintaining long personal streaks and as a quick way to confirm they are discussing the correct day’s puzzle when comparing notes with friends or family in different parts of the world.

Players who missed Wednesday’s puzzle or want to revisit it can typically still access the archive through the Times’ official Wordle platform, though prior-day puzzles are usually locked behind the publication’s games subscription for those without a free daily play allowance. The Times has increasingly bundled Wordle access with its broader digital games subscription, which also includes access to its crossword archive, Spelling Bee, and other puzzle offerings, as part of a broader strategy to grow recurring subscription revenue from its games division.

Thursday’s Wordle puzzle, number 1,902, will be released at midnight, giving players a fresh chance to extend their streaks after Wednesday’s dual-meaning word tested vocabulary and lateral thinking in equal measure.

Thailand’s NESDC says the country needs a “radical overhaul” of its production structure to achieve its high-income-economy target within the next 12 years. The planning agency is calling for greater investment in high-tech industries, AI data infrastructure and future-food production, while warning against short-term, debt-funded populist policies.

Key indicators: Target: high-income economy within 12 years; priorities include AI/data infrastructure, high-value manufacturing and future foods.

Why it matters: The warning comes as Thailand attracts large digital and data-centre investments but struggles to spread their benefits across the broader economy. The policy challenge is increasingly about converting FDI into productivity, local supply chains, skilled employment and sustainable domestic investment.

Baht strength puts Bank of Thailand back in focus

The baht is again attracting attention as regional currencies benefit from a softer US dollar, with OCBC warning that further appreciation could face resistance from the Bank of Thailand. The bank sees export competitiveness as a key constraint, although its published analysis contains inconsistent spot-rate references; the clearer trading signal is a range around USD/THB 32.70–33.30. (Thailand Business News)

Key indicators: SET Index closed at 1,595.16, up 0.44%, with THB75.81 billion in trading value; baht support/resistance cited by OCBC at approximately 32.70–32.80 / 33.20–33.30.

Why it matters: A stronger baht reduces import costs but threatens exporters’ price competitiveness and can make Thailand more expensive for international visitors. Currency appreciation is therefore becoming an increasingly important constraint on the recovery even as the SET shows resilience.

Thailand Business News — Baht outlook

BOT warns temporary business suspensions are rising

The Bank of Thailand is warning that Thailand’s labour market remains vulnerable as more companies temporarily suspend operations under Section 75 of the Labour Protection Act. The problem is concentrated in sectors facing intense competition, including automotive parts, garments, rubber products and plastics, alongside weaker business formation and more closures in trade and property. (nationthailand)

Key indicators: Section 75 suspensions are increasing; affected industries include automotive parts, garments, rubber and plastics; BOT also points to declining new-business formation and rising closures.

Why it matters: The warning highlights the uneven nature of Thailand’s recovery. Strong exports and AI-related investment are not yet translating consistently into employment and domestic demand, reinforcing concerns about a two-speed economy and pressure on SMEs.

China-ASEAN trade accelerates toward deeper regional supply-chain integration

China and ASEAN trade reached approximately US$744 billion in the first seven months of 2026, up 24.7% from the same period last year, according to figures presented by China’s Commerce Ministry. Intermediate-goods trade rose 24.5% in the first half, highlighting increasingly integrated production networks rather than simply growing trade in finished products. (teleSURenglish)

Key indicators: China-ASEAN trade US$744bn, +24.7% Jan–July; 2025 trade reached about US$1.05tn; intermediate-goods trade 2.86tn yuan in H1.

Why it matters: Thailand is deeply embedded in ASEAN manufacturing and Chinese supply chains, making this growth strategically important for exports, logistics and industrial investment. The upgraded ACFTA 3.0 framework also expands cooperation into digital, green-economy and supply-chain areas.

China-ASEAN trade developments

South Korea’s semiconductor boom sends a strong signal for Asian trade

South Korean exports jumped 68.7% year-on-year in August to US$98.26 billion, extending the growth streak to 15 consecutive months. The result substantially exceeded the 62.6% increase economists had expected and was driven by strong technology demand, while imports rose 22.5%, leaving a US$34.75 billion preliminary trade surplus. (Reuters)

Key indicators: Exports US$98.26bn, +68.7%; imports +22.5%; trade surplus US$34.75bn; manufacturing PMI 52.3, marking a ninth consecutive month of expansion. (Reuters)

Why it matters: South Korea remains one of the strongest real-time indicators of Asia’s technology and manufacturing cycle. Sustained AI-chip demand supports Thailand’s electronics-export outlook, but it also underscores the need for Thailand to move further into higher-value components and advanced manufacturing rather than relying mainly on assembly.

Reuters — South Korea August exports

Thailand–Asia market signal

Thailand’s SET remains resilient, but the latest BOT warning highlights a more fragile domestic economy beneath the strong export and investment headlines. The combination of baht appreciation, weak SME conditions and pressure on labour-intensive manufacturing is reinforcing the case for structural reforms rather than relying solely on monetary or fiscal stimulus.

Across Asia, the dominant positive signal remains the AI-driven manufacturing cycle: South Korean exports are surging and regional supply chains are becoming more integrated. For Thailand, the opportunity is to capture more of that value through semiconductors, digital infrastructure and advanced manufacturing while reducing the economy’s vulnerability to currency appreciation and low-productivity sectors.

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Allison Ellsworth, founder of ​Poppi soft drinks, started the beverage business as a kitchen experiment, with a Soda Stream and apple cider vinegar. She speaks to Leanna Byrne about pitching for funding on TV programme Shark Tank while nine months pregnant, relaunching during Covid lockdowns and becoming the number one soda on Amazon in the US and her $1.95 billion exit with PepsiCo.

Presenter: Leanna Byrne

Producer: Niamh McDermott and Victoriya Holland

You can email the team: businessdaily@bbc.co.uk

(Photo credit: Allison Ellsworth)

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London businesses have warned the Prime Minister that the capital’s housing costs are damaging their ability to hire and keep staff, and that growth “in every postcode” cannot be delivered if the forthcoming Budget makes London less competitive with rival international cities.

Polling commissioned for the launch of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (LCCI) Choose LDN campaign found that 74% of London business leaders say the cost of housing is limiting their ability to recruit and retain staff. The chamber, which has a business network of more than 12,000, said losing the next generation of talent would weaken the capital’s standing against other global cities and put jobs, investment and growth across Britain at risk.

The survey found that 70% of young people across the UK believe career opportunities are better in London than elsewhere, with just 11% saying they are better outside it. Yet 58% of those pursuing a career outside the capital believe London is too expensive to live or work in. Outside London, 28% of young people surveyed already own a suitable home; in London the figure is 13%.

LCCI said the gap between young people’s ambition and what they can afford was “deeply concerning” at a time when almost one million young people are not in work or education. The latest ONS figures put the number of 16 to 24 year olds not in education, employment or training at 981,000 in April to June 2026.

Among those already working in London, the capital retains its pull. Some 81% say they are happy working in London, 79% see a clear career benefit from being based there and 82% of young Londoners say career opportunities are better in the capital. But only 60% of young people living in London see their long-term future there. Asked what would attract them to move to the capital, 30% of young people named being able to afford property in the next 10 years, ahead of better pay on 25% and a job in their field on 20%.

The findings land as the capital’s housing pipeline stalls, with London building just 7% of the homes it needed last year, and as recruiters forecast that up to 90,000 professional jobs will move out of London to the regions by 2031 because of the cost of operating in the capital.

LCCI argues the whole country has a stake in London’s ability to attract investment. The capital accounts for nearly a quarter of UK economic output and a third of its corporation tax, and London and the south east pay 45% of England’s income tax, the chamber said. London ran a £43.6 billion net fiscal surplus in 2022/23, the latest year for which ONS regional public finance figures are available, meaning the city generates tens of billions of pounds more in tax than is spent on it.

The chamber said the Budget, the devolution white paper and the Prime Minister’s 10 Year Plan for Britain should be used to increase London’s international competitiveness, and warned that using those moments to make the capital less attractive to international businesses would damage the country’s growth prospects.

Its Choose LDN campaign calls on the government to reverse the previous Chancellor’s increase in employer National Insurance contributions, secure a “pragmatic new deal” with the EU, cut the cost of the planning system and support first-time buyers, restore VAT-free shopping for international tourists and reverse changes to the non-dom regime.

It also wants King’s Cross designated as an AI Investment Zone, airport expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton funded by private investment, and backing for the Bakerloo line extension, the DLR extension to Thamesmead and a restart of work on Crossrail 2. LCCI said the Elizabeth line, which it values at £42 billion to the UK economy and which was funded through a mix of public and private investment, should be the model for future infrastructure projects.

Karim Fatehi OBE, chief executive of LCCI, said: “Thriving economies treat the success of their capital cities as national policy issues and build a consensus around their capital succeeding, whether you live there or not. If the Prime Minister is to meet his promise to deliver growth in every postcode, we must now do the same for London.”

He added: “We know the investment London misses out on does not go to another UK town or city, it moves to Paris, Frankfurt, Dubai or Singapore. Our rivals are not our fellow towns and cities. Our rivals are capital cities across the world. Whether you live in London or Leeds, Leicester or Liverpool, the success of our capital matters for jobs and funding for public services in every single part of the country.”

Julia Onslow-Cole, chair of LCCI, said the campaign was “positive, ambitious and timely” and added: “Making our capital city as attractive as possible for investment, job creation and growth helps to deliver prosperity across the whole country.”

Professor Michael Mainelli, president of LCCI and Lord Mayor of London in 2023 to 2024, said: “London’s success is not a London issue; it is a UK, even global, issue.”

He added: “Our international rivals are not standing still, and neither can we. If we make London the most attractive city in the world to do business, the benefits will reach far beyond the capital. When the world chooses London, the whole country succeeds.”

Cherry Martin

Cherry is Associate Editor of Business Matters with responsibility for planning and writing future features, interviews and more in-depth pieces for what is now the UK’s largest print and online source of current business news.